Displaying items by tag: seaweed

Sharing insights on a burgeoning industry at Seagriculture 2021

This article was featured in Eurofish Magazine 6 2021

It’s not enough that seaweed helps produce 50%–70% of the world’s oxygen. The various species of seaweed (72,500 known species and an unknown number of undiscovered species) can be used to produce food for humans, feed for animals and fish, pharmaceuticals, bioplastics, fertilisers, biofuels, and much more. Seaweed protects and regenerates ocean ecosystems, not to mention decarbonising the atmosphere. Yet, so far, seaweed’s potential has been largely overlooked.

With conventional agriculture facing challenges in feeding seven billion people and fish resources under pressure, algae are a promising possibility as an affordable global food supply with low environmental costs. While seaweed and other algae are a popular ingredient in Asian cuisine, in Europe consumption and production could easily increase. Against this backdrop the EU is providing financial support to the Alga4Food project. Alga4Food aims to explore the benefits of edible macro algae (seaweed) from the Portuguese coast and promote their use in Portuguese family cooking. Alga4Food analysed different types of seaweed to understand their flavour and nutritional value, to find the best ways to conserve them, and to develop suggestions for their culinary use. Similarities between seaweeds and traditional Portuguese foodstuffs like cabbage, sea cucumbers, and goose barnacles inspired ideas as to which kinds of seaweed might work as substitutes for these ingredients in traditional cooking. This has resulted in the creation of two cookbooks along with a series of seminars and cookery demonstrations. The books and more information are available on https://alga4food.wixsite.com/page

Wakame, a popular edible seaweed, has been farmed for over 1,000 years, and has long been used in a number of popular dishes in Korea and Japan. It is a main ingredient of seaweed salads, popular in sushi restaurants around the world. Due to its low calorie and high nutrient content many consider it to be a superfood. The marine seaweed farm operated by Gijang Sustainable Seaweed Network, based in Gijang, in the south-eastern part of South Korea, grows wakame (Undaria pinnatifida), which is dried, processed, and then sold for human consumption around the world. The main destinations are China, Japan, the US, Germany, Scandinavia, and the UK. Gijang is the second producer to be certified against the ASC-MSC seaweed standard, after Japanese Euglena Co.but is the first marine farm to qualify for certification.